We’re at the point in spring where some plants can start to flag. You’ll notice it most in the vegie patch, where things planted back in late winter will have put on a big spurt of growth, but are now starting to look a bit tired as temperatures warm and winds increase. To revive sagging fortunes in the vegie patch and beyond, it can be a great idea to splash around a watering can or two of liquid fertiliser.

Gardeners seem to forget that plants take up nutrients in liquid form. In other words, when you apply a solid fertiliser such as pelletised chook manure, nutrients don’t get absorbed through plant roots until the pellets start to dissolve in the presence of moisture. By contrast, liquid fertilisers provide a quick response. The nutrients are taken up almost immediately through a plant’s foliage and root system. This enables the savvy gardener to correct any deficiencies relatively quickly, in addition to providing a rapid boost to plant growth.

To give you an example of this fast-acting process, I used liquid fertiliser extensively during last summer’s wet weather. Heavy rainfall leaches nutrients from the soil, and as a consequence, some plants may show obvious signs of being “hungry”. Citrus trees, being gross feeders, were particularly vulnerable to nutrient deficiencies last summer, so once the soil had dried out a bit, I applied a solid fertiliser around the root zone of my trees to provide a slow release of nutrients. But that’s not all. I did so in tandem with fortnightly applications of liquid fertiliser. Until the solid fertiliser started to break down, the liquid fertiliser provided a rapid boost. The result was that the plants remained green and healthy all summer long.

Two other situations where liquid fertilisers really come into their own is with container plants, and leafy green vegetables. Plants such as lettuce, rocket, bok choy, and silverbeet will produce lots of tender leaves in response to regular applications of liquid feed, while container plants benefit greatly from monthly doses of liquid fertiliser as a supplement to slow release products. Indoor plants in particular are prime candidates for regular liquid feeding during the warmer months of the year.

At this point, some of you might be wondering what I even mean by the term “liquid fertiliser”. So let’s define it. A liquid fertiliser is any liquid containing nutrients essential for healthy plant growth, including nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. Liquid fertilisers shouldn’t be confused with liquid plant tonics. These products are often based on seaweed extract, and generally contain trace elements and other helpful micro-nutrients, but very little nitrogen. Rather than promote foliage growth, tonics enhance soil life, encourage healthy root formation and provide other benefits such as making plants more resistant to frost and drought.

Liquid fertilisers, on the other hand, come in a wide array of different configurations based on the ingredients used in their manufacture. The most basic are very low-tech and can be entirely home made. Human urine (don’t cringe) has been used as a fertiliser for thousands of years, and there’s still merit in having the gentlemen of the house say good night to the lemon tree. At home you can also make liquid fertiliser from the worm juice that accumulates in the lower chamber of your worm farm, or from comfrey or soft weed leaves steeped in a bucket of water for couple of weeks.

Some organic gardeners make a compost tea by placing about one litre of compost in a shadecloth “teabag”, putting the bag in a 10 litre bucket, and letting the liquid brew for a week before use. With any of the above fertilisers it’s important to dilute to about one part concentrate to 10 parts water.

When it comes to commercial products, nurseries and hardware stores carry dozens of different liquid fertiliser brands. Being an organic gardener I choose products that are made from previously living ingredients, rather than synthetic chemicals. My favourite liquid fertilisers are based on fish emulsion, and in my view the best of the lot is Charlie Carp. I generally avoid endorsing a product specifically, and never accept payment or kickbacks for such recommendations, but I love the fact that Charlie Carp takes a problem – feral fish infesting our waterways – and turns it into a fertiliser for plants. Brilliant. There are lots of others available as well, but it would pay to look for those that are Certified Organic.

The only other caveats I have with liquid fertilisers is to always dilute them according manufacturer directions, to avoid burning sensitive plant roots, and to not ignore the long term process of building healthy, fertile soil via the continual addition of decomposed organic matter. Liquid fertiliser can be helpful, but soil building is still the main game.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 22nd October 2011. Photo by Justin Russell, orange blossom.

Check out our new site The Radish, edible gardening from roots to fruits.

There comes a point in spring where I’m absolutely itching to sink my teeth into the first properly ripe strawberry of the season. I don’t buy strawberries from the shops. I grew up eating plump, deliciously sweet berries grown on my Pa’s market garden in Brisbane, so to my palate, the commercial strawberries sold in plastic punnets are a serious disappointment. As far as I’m concerned, real berries come from the garden (or a really good local farmer), and they’re as far removed from the bland, mushy, transported-halfway-across-the-state excuses for fruit that promise so much but deliver so little.

I get the impression that some people consider my attitude elitist. Someone once suggested that not everyone’s lucky enough to have a large garden like me. Others have claimed that they too could grow their own strawberries of only they’d achieved my level of gardening skill! Such defeatism! I try to explain to the naysayers that they’d probably change their tune if they saw just how laid back my strawberry growing efforts actually are.

Besides preparing the soil properly before planting, mulching the plants until they naturally cover the ground, and putting out some eco-friendly snail bait during wet weather, I do nothing to my strawberries other than pick, and enjoy, them. I don’t spray, fertilise, or water. My plants don’t have viruses, but they do get the occasional bit of grey mould during wet summers. I don’t worry about it. And I’m not a commercial grower, so I ignore the traditional advice that strawberry plants should be completely replaced every three years to prevent disease taking hold. In spite of my laissez faire approach we get bumper crops of berries every spring, summer and autumn that more than justify the minuscule amount of time I put into the the plants.

So what’s your excuse? I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just that if you’re keen to grow strawberries but haven’t yet had a go, I’m wondering what’s holding you back? If space is limited try growing strawbs in pots or hanging baskets. If your soil is black clay try raised beds. If you’re worried you don’t have the requisite skills, take comfort in the fact that you only need the bare basics.

There’s a common misconception about strawberries that they are delicate, and therefore, difficult to grow. While it’s true that the berries themselves aren’t very robust, the plants are actually quite resilient. The ideal growing conditions are a free draining, slightly acidic soil that’s full of organic matter, a position in sun or dappled shade, and some supplemental irrigation during really hot, dry periods. These needs reflect the plant’s origins in the woodlands of Europe where wild strawberries grow naturally in the humus-rich, semi-shaded soils of the forest floor. Replicate these conditions at home as best you can, and you’ll be on a winner.

Unfortunately, it’s a bit trickier to pick a winner among the few strawberry varieties offered for sale in the nurseries. Truth be told, many are superseded commercial varieties that were bred for qualities such as transportability, extended harvest and disease resistance. Like most commercial fruit, flavour isn’t top priority. For home growers, the situation is reversed. My primary consideration is flavour, so I try to choose fruit and vegies that are, more than anything else, absolutely delicious to eat. Usually this means looking to specialist nurseries for the right plants.

With this in mind I’ve just planted out a new patch of strawbs. The variety is ‘Hokawase’, an old Japanese selection that is blessed with one of the most incredible flavours on the face of the planet. Hokawase is so good you’re unlikely to ever find your local supermarket. The berries don’t transport well (strike one), they go soft in the punnet (strike two) and only bear in spring and early summer (strike three, and they’re out!). But for me, Hokawase is precisely the kind of strawberry I want to grow.

‘Red Gauntlet’, my other main variety, is incredibly productive but lacks the flavour of the best strawberries. I’ve also got an unknown variety that nearly rivals Hokawase, but the next best is the much overlooked alpine strawberry or fraises des bois – the wild strawberry of the wood. This plant runs like crazy, which makes it a good groundcover, and it produces little fingernail sized morsels that burst in your mouth like sherbet. Still, they’ve got nothing on a just picked Hokawase.

The gates of berry heaven are wide open and all gardeners with an ounce of enthusiasm for growing their own fruit are welcome to enter.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 24th September 2011. Photo by Justin Russell, Red Gauntelt strawberries and calendula in the vegie patch.

The sap is rising. New growth is suddenly bursting out everywhere in my garden, and the first blossoms have made an appearance. Almonds are invariably head of the queue, but they’re closely followed by an apple called Anna, a low chill variety that flowers very early compared to many of it’s compatriots. A couple of Japanese plums have also burst, and the scene is starting to take on a distinct springtime exuberance.

One of the jobs I look forward to most in late August is grafting. I propagate most of my own apples and pears for my little fruit tree nursery, and it’s a process that I find quite meditative. There must be something about grafting that appeals to my sensibilities. I usually emerge from a session feeling quite happy with the world, probably because the process is all about hope. There’s a miraculous quality in the uniting of a scion with a rootstock that I never tire of.

It can be tempting to think that grafting is a skill beyond the reach of the average home gardener. It isn’t. Anyone with the right gear, a willingness to practice and enough strength in the hands to cut fruitwood can have a go at grafting. Before long you’ll be able to perform all kinds of wonderful horticultural tricks and solve some otherwise insurmountable problems. Like changing from one plant variety to another.

Let’s imagine you planted a Red Delicious apple (my least favourite variety), but have come to your senses and decided that you’d rather grow something truly delicious – a Cox’s Orange Pippin or a Lord Lambourne for example. Assuming the apple tree is healthy, there’s absolutely no need to pull it out and start again. You can simply cut the existing tree back, then “top work” it by grafting branches over to the desired variety.

Or, you might choose to graft the tree over to a number of varieties. Pollination can be an issue with some fruit varieties, and in small gardens, finding space for more than one plant may be impossible. Don’t fret. If you’ve learnt how to graft, you can easily grow two or three varieties on a single tree, solving your pollination problem without the need to find room for extra plants. For collectors of rare plants, grafting will enable you to put dozens, even hundreds, of individual varieties on a single tree.

The process is actually very low-tech, but you will need to follow a few simple guidelines to avoid butchering your trees. The first is that grafting requires a good quality knife, preferably a proper grafting knife, that’s been honed to a very sharp edge. It seems counter-intuitive, but the sharper your knife, the less likely you’ll be to take off a thumb. To provide support and prevent drying out before the graft “takes”, you’ll need to seal the join up with grafting tape – it’s available at most hardware stores and nurseries.

Secondly, timing is of the essence. The best time to graft is in late winter or early spring, when the rootstock is “on the move” but the scionwood is still dormant. I harvest my scions in early winter, then store them in a plastic bag in the fridge until required. When harvesting wood, aim for branches of pencil thickness and cut them into pieces containing three or four buds. Of course you’ll need a rootstock to graft the scion on to. This is likely to be an existing tree in your garden, but for enthusiasts, you can propagate rootstocks from seed or cuttings, or alternatively, buy a tree, cut off the top, and graft onto it.

Third, practice. The three most useful grafts for beginners are the whip, the whip and tongue, and the cleft (or wedge) graft. It’s beyond the scope of this article to describe them in detail, so I’d recommend you consult a decent book or have a look on YouTube for some video demonstrations. I got lots of excellent tips from a series of grafting videos made by an English apple grower named Stephen Hayes (his username is stephenhayesuk). Once you’re familiar with the techniques, make cut after cut on some scrap wood until you feel confident enough to have a go at a proper graft.

Then do just that – give it a go. Apples and pears are the easiest trees to work with, and they take readily. As long as you graft at the right time and ensure the cambium layer (green layer of growth cells just below the bark) of the scion matches that of the rootstock, you’ll get more successful grafts than failures. Other fruit and ornamental varieties can be a bit trickier, but they too, are worth a shot. Grafting is a skill worth learning.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 20th August 2011. Photo by Kylie Russell, Justin grafting a pear tree.

What a run of magnificent winter weather we’ve just experienced. Frosty dawns and sunny afternoons are tonic for the soul as far as I’m concerned, and it seems the various fruit trees in my garden appreciate the weather just as much as I do. There are signs that my fruit trees are waking from their winter rest. Most notable are the buds. On some trees they are small and slender. On others, the pears and apples in particular, the buds grow fatter and more expectant by the day.

But hard won experience has taught me not to get fooled. It is, after all, barely the start of August. Officially, winter still has a month to run, and in some parts of the Downs, including my little cold pocket on the western fall of the Great Dividing Range, frost can settle on the ground well into October. My enthusiasm for the garden is swelling just as quickly as the buds on my trees, but I’m not quite ready to throw open the windows and embrace the wonders of spring.

Besides, there’s still a mountain of jobs to do in anticipation for the season to come. August is probably the busiest time of the year for food-centric gardeners like me, for the simple reason that if the preparation work isn’t done in earnest now, there will be slim pickings in the vegie garden until the summer crops get started in November. And if I can help it, I prefer to grow my own, rather than depend on the seasonless conveniences offered by the supermarkets.

Traditionally, the period from late winter to early summer was the leanest time of the year in cold climate gardens. People called it the “hungry gap”. It was a time when the stored surplus of autumn began to dwindle but the weather hadn’t thawed sufficiently for fresh produce to be ready to eat. Hunger, even starvation, was a very real possibility. This is why lent is celebrated during the northern hemisphere spring – the religious symbolism of fasting and suffering coincides with the reality of rarely filled bellies.

Thankfully, the situation isn’t quite as dire as it once was. Yes, I loathe the supermarkets, that much is obvious. And I’m very dubious about the perceived security of the modern food system. But compared to the average medieval peasant, or the modern day Somalian for that matter, we’ve got it very easy. The grocery shops offer a safety net that would be inconceivable to many, and our climate is, for the time being at least, conducive to growing a broad range of nutritious vegetables every month of the year.

So for me, it’s head down bum up for the next month, not so much in an effort to avoid the hungry gap, but to build a level of security and sheer deliciousness into my family life that no supermarket can ever begin to match. My Woolies…my big toe! I’ll tell you where my real loyalties lie, and that’s with my garden.

Top of my notepad titled “Jobs for August” is spuds. Some people ask me why I bother growing something so cheap and readily available in the shops. My answer, beside what I just wrote above, is that you must never have tasted a freshly dug spud. Tender, new potatoes bandicooted from the soil before the main crop is ready, are exceptionally flavoursome. I’ll always find some room for them in the garden. At the moment though, my seed potatoes are sitting on the kitchen bench waiting patiently for me to get them into the ground. They’ll go into well drained soil into which I’ve incorporated some compost and a generous scattering of pelletised poultry fertiliser.

Besides potatoes, my next priority is roots. Especially carrots. They are a nightly staple in our household, and the last of our autumn sowing was pulled from the ground this week. This time around I’m trying out an heirloom variety called ‘Danvers’ as well as my old favourite ‘Purple Dragon’, and unlike spuds, both will be sown into well dug soil that has no added compost or fertiliser. Carrots and parsnips prefer lean ground.

Finally, I’m going to sow a “catch crop” of leafy greens. Because greens are so fast growing they can be planted to catch the small window of opportunity that exists between late winter and the first plantings of summer ripening tomatoes, corn and beans in September and October. Rocket, mizuna, kale, Asian cabbage, and lettuce are all easy to start from either seed or seedlings and give quick results when speed is warranted.

There’s plenty to be done. And to be honest, after writing this week’s column I’m almost so keen to get into my vegie patch I could burst quicker than a plum blossom in September. It’s an exciting time of the year.

First published in The Toowoomba Chronicle 30th July 2011. Photo by Justin Russell, unfurling buds on an ornamental peach.

If you’ve been reading Secret Garden for a few years, you’ll probably be familiar with my love/hate relationship with roses. Every winter, when the bushes are bare and stragglier than a mangy wolfhound, I get tempted to pull the wretched things out and be done with them. By November, I’m in love again. No one grows roses for their winter appearance, me least of all. Flowers are the main attraction. Without fail, I succumb to the promise of beauty in the months ahead and abandon all thoughts of hauling my poor old plants to the tip.

Having earned their pardon, by late July I’m guiltily lavishing the plants with attention. The rose garden becomes like a day spa for plants. First up is a proper pruning, followed by a complete spray, and finished off with a good feed and some tonic.

Pruning is anything but the dark art that some gardeners make it out to be. After all, the practice isn’t a pre-requisite for the plants to produce flowers, and I occasionally commit rose growing heresy by pruning my plants some winters and ignoring them in others. This will have rose aficionados waking in a cold sweat, but the proof is in the pudding – never yet have I had a rose bush refuse to flower. We’re talking here about some of the toughest plants in the world that will do their thing regardless of any intervention from the gardener.

I have to admit, however, that rose pruning is a satisfying job. The rhythmic click of secateurs through rose wood on a sunny day in late winter is quite meditative, so when time’s on my side, I cheerfully give my plants their annual haircut. The basic process for modern bush and hybrid tea roses is pretty straightforward.

Firstly, gather your tools: a spray bottle of metho or tea tree oil to sterilise your gear and prevent the spread of disease; a pair of sturdy gloves to avoid getting thorns stuck in your finger (I find it easier to keep my right hand glove-free); and most importantly, a pair of sharp secateurs. If they’re not sharp, get yourself a simple diamond sharpener from the nursery and use it. For branches larger than a big bloke’s thumb, you’ll need a pair of loppers or a pruning saw as well.

Start the job by appraising the plant. Look for dead, damaged and diseased branches then cut them out. Once that’s done, your aim with bush roses should be to do two things. The first is to open up the centre of the plant to facilitate air flow and reduce fungal disease. Create a goblet or open vase shape by pruning off any branches growing toward the centre of the bush. Secondly, shorten the remaining branches by about a third of their length. Make the cuts a centimetre above an outward facing bud, and ideally, cut on a 45 degree angle sloping away from the bud.

For standard roses, prune the main branches back by about two thirds of their length, in addition to opening the centre and removing dead wood. Climbing roses are trickier, but are best pruned to short two-bud stubs spaced along horizontally trained canes. Once blooming heritage roses are rarely pruned in winter. Do the job in late summer when flowering has ceased.

Once the pruning is complete, it’s time to spray. The traditional over wintering spray for roses is lime sulphur. It’s still a decent choice, being low toxic and suitable for organic gardens, yet effective against a broad range of fungal diseases and dormant insect pests. An even less toxic alternative is a combination of potassium bicarbonate (sold as EcoRose) mixed with a horticultural oil. This will help prevent outbreaks of blackspot and powdery mildew.

Finally some food and a tonic. I use a complete organic fertiliser based on pelletised chook poo for my roses, but you’ll have good success with blood and bone or well rotted manure. To help my plants flower as freely as possible I also throw around some wood ash from the fire, which is high in calcium and potassium. Two or three handfuls per plant is usually plenty. If you don’t heat with wood, choose a fertiliser with a high potassium content or apply some extra potash.

To atone for my rose growing sins I finish the job with a seaweed tonic, a deep watering, and a fresh application of mulch. All of this pampering should produce lush, disease resistant plants that flower so prolifically that they make even the hardest of hearts turn to mush. If you doubt me, try poking your head through the door at a rose grower’s show – most of the competitors are blokes.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 30th July 2011. Photo by Justin Russell, Newtown Park, Toowoomba.

It’s time to cut my asparagus back. The fronds have turned yellow, indicating to me that photosynthesis has ceased and the plants have begun to store starch in their root system to provide energy for what author Barbara Kingsolver calls “a phallic send-up when winter starts to break”.

Canned, supermarket asparagus bears such faint resemblance to the freshly picked version that you could be forgiven for believing that they are completely different vegetables. Come to think of it, they might as well be. The tinned stuff is mushy, high in salt, is usually imported from overseas and tastes horrible. Home grown asparagus, eaten within hours of being picked, is firm, glossy, full of nutrients and has a unique flavour that is both sweet and earthy.

Every food gardener should grow some asparagus, but for some unknown reason, the plant is shrouded in mystery. The industry group Asparagus Australia describes asparagus as a difficult plant to grow. This is complete nonsense. The opposite is true. Asparagus is an easy vegie for the home grower, which makes me wonder whether the reputation for being difficult is a myth propagated by commercial growers keen to protect their own patch.

Like any vegie, you’ll get the best results from asparagus when you make an effort to learn the basic science behind the plant. The very first thing to understand is that asparagus is a perennial. Unlike annual plants, which complete their life cycle in a single growing season or year, and biennials, that complete their life cycle in two years, perennials live for at least two years, often many more. In the case of asparagus, cropping can continue for as much as twenty years.

Drill down a bit further, and you’ll learn that asparagus is a herbaceous perennial. This means that it grows actively though the warmer months of the year, goes dormant as temperatures drop in autumn, and dies back to a permanent root system or “crown”. Being native to Europe, northern Africa and western Asia, asparagus needs a cold winter to to induce dormancy, making it a plant ideal for the coldest areas across Toowoomba and the Downs.

You can grow asparagus from seed, but because the plant is dioecious (produces male and female reproductive organs on separate plants), you’ll end up with about half female seedlings. Male plants produce the best spears, so the traditional way to get started is by purchasing dormant, two-year-old male crowns in winter. The standard variety is Australia is ‘Mary Washington’, which is stocked during winter by most nurseries and mail order suppliers such as the Diggers Club and Green Harvest.

To produce the fattest, most succulent spears, asparagus needs to be given the royal treatment. Bearing in mind that your asparagus bed will produce crops for two decades or more, you should begin preparations at least a month prior to planting. Select a sunny site with good natural drainage, and work the soil over well, incorporating a generous amount of well rotted manure, some compost, and if drainage is likely to be a problem, some coarse sand and gypsum. A double handful per square metre of blood and bone or pelletised poultry manure won’t go astray either. Water the bed, mulch it, then give the soil a few weeks to settle.

When you’re ready to plant, start by digging a trench about twenty centimetres deep. Form a ridge about 15cm tall running down the length of the trench, then drape the asparagus crowns over the ridge so that the roots hang down on either side like inverted mop heads. Space the plants about 30 cm apart. Work quickly to ensure the crowns don’t dry out while exposed to the air, then backfill, making sure there’s good contact between the plant roots and the soil. Water it all in with some seaweed extract.

Problem is, it will feel like a lifetime before you can harvest your first spears. In the first spring after planting, my advice is to leave the spears alone. They will grow on to produce fronds, and in turn, the fronds will collect solar energy during summer which will feed the crown and help it to bulk up. Cut the fronds back to the ground in early winter once they have yellowed. In the second spring after planting, harvest no more than half the spears. In the spring following you’ll be able to cut spears to your heart’s content.

I reckon you’re missing out if you settle for tinned asparagus. It’s about as junky as junk food gets. And besides, if you grow your own, you get to do what garden writer Monty Don suggests – “ spit in the eye of the seasonless food industry and its joyless inducements of year round treats”.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 18 June 2011. Photo by Susy Morris via flickr.com.

Take a hammer, an old brick, a couple of hungry boys, and an ice cream container full of macadamia nuts, and what do you get? Beside the odd whacked thumb and lots of brown shell scattered all over the place, you get my brother and I sitting in the July sun on my grandparents’ back patio having a cracking good time.

My Pa and Grandma had a lovely old macadamia tree in their Manly West backyard. The Queensland Nut, as they called it, shaded Pa’s tinnie for much of the year but as the nuts began to fall in winter, we spent many happy hours placing the nuts carefully on the brick so they didn’t roll off, then giving them our best shot with a claw hammer to crack open the shells. For a nine and seven year old, this process of extraction was almost as much fun as eating the contents. Something about the nuts must have resonated with me though, because to this day, macadamias remain my favourite.

Sadly, it gets a bit cold in my garden to grow a macadamia tree. Even the so called frost tolerant varieties won’t withstand our lowest recorded temperature of minus ten, but not to be outdone, I’m satisfying my nut cravings with a range of deciduous nut trees. So far I’ve planted a self pollinating almond, a couple of hazelnuts, and an avenue of pecans. This year I’ve earmarked positions for another hazelnut, and a chestnut or two. In years to come I’m hoping to add a walnut and some pine nuts. Fitting them all in will be an issue, but I’m convinced that nuts are worth finding space for.

Compared to other edible plants, nut trees are often overlooked by food-minded gardeners. This is despite the fact that nuts are highly nutritious, tasty, relatively easy to store, and useful in every course of a meal. Granted, some nut trees can become very large – pecans, walnuts and chestnuts get way too big for a town garden – but others are compact and most are highly prized for their ornamental value. Almonds, for example, are just as pretty in spring as any other member of the Prunus genus. Hazelnuts can be planted as a decorative, and productive hedge.

As a rule, nuts are also easier trees to grow than their large fruiting cousins. Queensland Fruit Fly is the bane of fruit growers in our part of the world, but thankfully, nuts are virtually free of this devastating insect. While nuts are a fruit like any other, the part we eat is actually the seed rather than the flesh, which means that fruit flies have no-where to lay their eggs.

Have I convinced you to give nuts a try? If so, there are a couple of pointers to consider before rushing out to the nursery, but nothing too onerous. As always, select plants appropriate to your soil and climate. Most deciduous nut trees can be grown in Toowoomba and the Downs, but soil might be the limiting factor for some. Chestnuts need deep, slightly acid soil and will generally thrive in areas along the escarpment where red soils dominate. Pecans, walnuts and almonds need good drainage, but aren’t too worried about soil pH, while hazels aren’t overly fussy about soil, but need plenty of moisture and cool winters to break dormancy.

If you can tick all the boxes with soil and climate, the next issue to consider is pollination. There are a couple of self-fertile almond varieties around, which means you’ll only need a single tree to produce fruit, but most deciduous nut trees are pollinated not by bees, but the wind. As a consequence you’ll need to plant at least two varieties of chestnuts, pecans and walnuts fairly close together to get decent crops. Hazels are notoriously poor pollinators so the more varieties you can accommodate within a hedgerow, the better.

Pistachios deserve a special mention. They are a delicious nut and make a handsome tree, but unfortunately are much better suited to very free draining soils and a Mediterranean climate than our wet summers. If you live in a drier location with gravelly soil, such as the Granite Belt and parts of the Downs where olives do well, you might want to give pistachios a try. Pay particular attention to pollination. Pistachios are dioecious, which means they produce flowers of a single sex on a single tree. For nuts to be produced you’ll need a male and a female plant.

Finally, if you’re in a relatively frost free area and you’ve got the room, please do yourself a favour and plant a macadamia tree. Roasted, lightly salted macadamia nuts are equally fit for a king, and grandkids with a hammer.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 11th June 2011. Photo by Tom Scott via flickr.com.

There’s something undeniably spectacular about a Toowoomba spring, as the city’s parks and gardens burst with colour like horticultural firecrackers. But for uncontrived beauty, autumn has a special appeal, and the season just gone must rank as one of the best in decades.

The weather has been truly pleasant, rainfall has been regular but not overwhelming, and you might have noticed that the display of autumn colour has been simply magnificent. The liquidambars in particular have put on a memorable show over the last couple of weeks, and we owe it all to the floods at the start of the year. I told you there’d be some upsides. With so much moisture in the soil plants that survived summer have grown explosively. Leaves have been produced in great number and they’re full of sugars, which means that when chlorophyll production ceases as we head into winter, intense red and yellow pigments are revealed. And what a revelation they’ve been.

But autumn is more than a one trick pony. If you look carefully, there are humbler delights to savour as well. I love working in the vegie garden during May, and one of this year’s highlights is a bed chockers with various kinds of leafy greens, including bok choy, ‘American Curled’ spinach, ‘Red Russian’ kale, ‘French Breakfast’ radish (the leaves are just as edible as the root), ‘Cavolo Nero’ kale, ‘Purple Oakleaf” lettuce, mizuna, and rocket ‘Astro’. My daughter Marley and I planted these successively from seed and punnets over the last six weeks. We’ve been harvesting from the bed since the start of May, and by picking just a few leaves at a time, we’ll be enjoying a continual harvest right through until spring.

A bed full of leafy greens might lack the visual spectacle of some crops, but you’d be a fool to underestimate the value of these simple plants to the Grow It Yourselfer. Besides being among the easiest vegies to grow, leafy greens are nutritional powerhouses. Anyone who watched Popeye as a kid would know that spinach is a rich source of iron, but you might not realise that Cavolo Nero, for example, has double the cancer fighting anti-oxidants of broccoli and some lettuce varieties contain more vitamin C than oranges. Kilojoule for kilojoule, leafy greens are the most concentrated source of nutrition available.

In my garden, leafy greens play a role a bit like the drummer in a band. While more conspicuous plants hog centre stage and lap up the oohs and aahs from adoring visitors, leafy greens just plug away in the background week after week, pumping out food with regularity and little fuss. Unlike some of the more fickle crops, greens are, like the best drummers, indispensable.

Most of them are also a cinch to grow. Some can even be weedy. Alongside radish, rocket is the easiest of all vegies to grow from seed, a quality that can become problematic if you let the plants flower and scatter their seed throughout the garden. You’ll be pulling them out by the dozen. Brassicas including kale, bok choy and mizuna are similarly easy to grow from seed, and will be up within days when sown into warm soil prepared to a reasonable tilth.

Lettuce is only slightly more difficult. This is by virtue of the seed, which is very fine and requires care that it doesn’t scatter in the wind while being sown. I usually start lettuces in punnets, covering the seed with a very fine layer of sand or seed raising mix before transplanting the seedlings into the garden once roots start poking out through the drainage holes.

At this time of the year, growth is pretty moderate, even with the aptly named rocket. In many ways this is an advantage, as leafy plants are less likely to bolt to seed like they can in warm weather, but to encourage them along, I often make a mini greenhouse out of an old two litre plastic milk bottle. I cut out the top and bottom of the bottle, then slip it over the seedling like a sleeve. The plants benefit from the extra warmth created inside the bottle, and are protected from slugs during their vulnerable seedling stage. Once the plants are growing strongly, the sleeves can be removed and harvesting can begin.

As for how you should use leafy greens in your winter cooking, my suggestion is to be creative. Try warm salads, make rocket pesto, add spinach to risotto and bok choy to stir fry. One of our family favourites is colcannon made by combining creamy mashed potato with Cavolo Nero fried in olive oil with bacon and garlic. Serve with warming lamb stew and crusty bread. Bring on winter!

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 28th May 2011. Photo by Justin Russell, leafy greens, with Red Russian kale in the foreground.

All gardeners, at some point or another, are affected by what I like to call irresistible plant urge syndrome. The symptoms go a bit like this. You stop by your local nursery with no particular intent other than to have a browse. Out of the corner of your eye you spot a plant that’s been on your wish list for years, but have never been able to find a place in the garden for. You purchase the said plant and take it home, only to find that there’s a good reason it was stuck on your wish list – you don’t have a place for it. Undeterred, you convince yourself that you’ll make a spot available in the not too distant future, and will leave the new plant in its pot with a number of other plants also waiting to be planted into the garden.

The poor old plant sits there in horticultural purgatory for the next year, where it gradually deteriorates, becoming pot bound and turning yellow. One hot summer day you forget to water the plant and it dies. You throw the contents of the pot onto the compost, and resolve not to buy the same plant until you have a position in the garden ready to go. One spring day a few months hence, you stop by your local nursery and…all serious gardeners know how the story ends. Irresistible plant urge syndrome. I’ve had it, and still get the occasional relapse.

I’m doing my best, though, to resist the urge to buy plants on impulse. Instead, I’ve resolved to work with the plants I’ve already got in the garden, taking cuttings from favourites, dividing others, and where necessary, digging some up and moving them to a more favourable position. I find plant relocation particularly satisfying work for some reason. Maybe it’s because I’m making the most of what I’ve got, fine tuning rather than longing for more, and at least part of the pleasure is that the work is done mostly in autumn.

The weather for the last three days has been absolutely superb in my garden. We’ve woken to frosty mornings followed by perfectly clear, still days, with enough warmth left in the sun to wear a short sleeved shirt. There’s also plenty of warmth left in the soil. This warmth is a legacy of summer, and it will gradually decrease over the coming months until the soil reaches its lowest temperature in early spring.

The benefit of transplanting in autumn is two fold: first, the warm soil means quick recovery of damaged roots. Secondly, the cooler air temperatures mean that the plant loses less moisture through it’s foliage. Put simply, a plant moved in autumn is under less stress.

Even so, there are a few rules to follow to give a relocated plant the best chance of success. Start by identifying which plants move well, and which don’t. Those with a deep and woody root system, such as many natives, tend to be much more difficult to move than plants such as camellias or citrus, which have a fairly shallow, fibrous root system. Clumping perennials such as agapanthus, bearded iris, cannas, sedums, kniphofia and catmint, for example, are perfect candidates for division and relocation.

For plants that are small enough to be dug and moved by hand, you should begin by cutting the foliage back by at least half it’s overall size. This reduces moisture loss. Then drive a sharp spade around the rootball of the plant and dig it up. Aim to strike a balance between retaining as many roots as possible, and allowing easy relocation of the plant to its new position.

Once the plant has been lifted, a race is on. Roots exposed to the air will begin drying out and left for too long, the plant might fail to recover. Ideally, you should get the plant into its new position as soon as possible, which means having the site prepared ahead of time, otherwise “heel” it into a temporary position, or put the plant in a plastic bag with the roots contained in moist sawdust or newspaper. Plant out at the next opportunity.

Just prior to replanting, soak the roots for half an hour in a bucket containing a weak seaweed solution. The seaweed will help the plant overcome transplant shock, then plant out carefully into well prepared soil. Water the plant in well, even if the soil’s moist. Keep the water up for the first few months at least, and fingers crossed, your relocated plant will grow away strongly in spring. Then you, the gardener, will feel the warm glow of having made the most of what was already in the garden, rather than succumbing to irresistible plant urges.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 21st May, 2011. Photo by Justin Russell, Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’.

The events come thick and fast at this time of the year. Easter, Anzac Day, and Earth Day last weekend, Gardenfest and Autumnfest this weekend (see Garden Cuttings for more info), and the Hampton Food and Arts Festival in a couple of weeks’ time. One event that’s likely to fly under the radar, but deserves more attention is the inaugural National Permaculture Day, tomorrow, May 1.

Despite being described by veteran environmentalist David Suzuki as “the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet”, Permaculture has yet to gain any real traction in our part of the world. As far as I’m aware, there are no local events being held tomorrow, which is a shame, and though there are a handful of dedicated permaculture gardens hidden around the place, none are throwing open their gates to the public. I wonder why this is the case. Is it because of Toowoomba’s conservatism, where anything and anyone bearing a green tinge generally gets treated with suspicion? Or is it simply that permaculture is a difficult concept to understand?

Conservative our area might be, but in my experience the latter reason is true: most local gardeners have heard of permaculture, but few actually understand what the concept is about. Personally, I find permaculture to be brilliantly conceived, even revolutionary, but it is a very difficult concept to penetrate for the average home gardener with no experience in design or ecology. And while I don’t really consider myself a permaculturalist (and certainly don’t qualify as a permaculture designer), I would like to spend this Saturday and next introducing the permaculture concept and outlining ways we might be able to apply it in our gardens.

As with all concepts, it’s worth starting with a definition. The Oxford English Dictionary defines permaculture as “the development or maintenance of an ecosystem intended to be self-sustaining and to satisfy the living requirements of its inhabitants, esp. by the use of renewable resources”. That hardly pins the concept to the mat, so let’s expand a bit with some history.

The term Permaculture” is a portmanteau of permanent culture, and permanent agriculture. The concept originated in the mid 1970′s when a young ecology student, David Holmgren, and his lecturer at the University of Tasmania, Bill Mollison, published an article in Tasmania’s Organic Farmer and Gardener Magazine. This article was soon followed by an interview on ABC radio, and in 1978, Holmgren and Mollison’s seminal book on the concept, Permaculture One: A perennial Agriculture for Human Settlements.

Sadly, the two visionaries have since gone their separate ways. Mollison, who still lives in Tassie, has focussed on education, believing that permaculture could spread exponentially by teaching students, who would in turn teach others, and so on. He taught the first Permaculture Design Course (known as PDC’s by Permies) at Stanley in Tasmania, in 1979, and thousands of PDC’s have been taught around the world in the years since.

David Holmgren took a different approach. With permaculture gaining widespread publicity, he retreated to a smallholding in Victoria to quietly test his ideas. In 2002, he re-emerged with Permaculture – Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability a landmark book that reinterpreted permaculture’s fundamental design principles as a creative adaptation to the decline in non-renewable sources of energy such as oil. I’ll talk more about these principles next week.

Until then, I want to conclude this week’s column by mentioning the three ethics at the core of the Permaculture concept. In Permaculture One, Mollison and Holmgren described these as: Care for the Earth; Care for People; and Fair Share. The first ethic is self explanatory. The second suggests that all people should have access to what they need to live a safe, and healthy life. The third is a principle that most gardening and farming models overlook, and is based on the ethic we’re all taught as kids – only take what you need, and share the rest. Some permies call this, “return of the surplus”.

While some elements of permaculture are ripe for critique, I confess to having a great admiration for any movement that is built upon a set of foundational ethics like those above. What’s more, I believe they are the right ethics to build upon. We’re living in an age when most big, established institutions – business, politics and religion – are being white-anted from within by self interest and a desperation to cling to the status quo. In some cases, ethical foundations rotted away years ago. Permaculture offers a creative response.

Next week – The Principles of Permaculture Design

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 30th April, 2011.